


Yours and Our

by XmasAesthetics



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Community: rs_games, Domestic, Drug Use, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, R/S Games 2016, Raising Harry, Rampant Sentimentality, Second War with Voldemort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-10
Updated: 2016-10-10
Packaged: 2018-08-20 04:21:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8235910
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/XmasAesthetics/pseuds/XmasAesthetics
Summary: R/S Games 2016 - Day 6 - Team TimeThe day before Harry Potter and Teddy Lupin are due to come back from Hogwarts, Remus and Sirius receive a message that forces them to realize what's truly important in their home. Can they bring themselves to abandon the home they've made for each other over the past fifteen years, or will they stay and hide?In this AU Sirius Black doesn't go to prison, Nymphadora Tonks is only one year younger than Remus (rather than 13), and Teddy is only a few months older than Harry.





	

**Author's Note:**

> **Team:** Time  
>  **Title:** Yours and Our  
>  **Rating:** R  
>  **Warnings:** implied sex, drug use  
>  **Genre:** Fluff, Angst, Rampant Sentimentality  
>  **Word Count:** 6500  
>  **Summary:** The day before Harry Potter and Teddy Lupin are due to come back from Hogwarts, Remus and Sirius receive a message that forces them to realize what's truly important in their home. Can they bring themselves to abandon the home they've made for each other over the past fifteen years, or will they stay and hide?  
>  **Notes:** In this AU Sirius Black doesn't go to prison, Nymphadora Tonks is only one year younger than Remus (rather than 13), and Teddy is only a few months older than Harry. The rest is pretty much explicit within or non-crucial to the text.  
>  **Prompt:** #5 - ["Our House" by Crosby, Stills, and Nash](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fm-q0ELuk1A)

Remus floated the last box out of the garage and up into the open window of their flat. A few quick cleaning spells and the garage and the ancient ‘71 Austin Maxi still entombed inside it, were spotless.  With a sigh, Remus dragged an arm over his sweating face  and pocketed his wand. Teddy and Harry would be home tomorrow, and Remus was preparing their homecoming presents. He couldn’t blame Sirius for not helping, as the store was a madhouse today, but Remus was more than a little exhausted in this early June heat. He walked over to where he’d parked the bikes earlier today, and began wheeling one towards the garage. 

Teddy was 17, as of April, and Harry would be 17 at the end of July, and they were past due a set of motorbikes of their very own. Sirius, thusly, had developed the Wolfstar Wolfcubs, and even though Remus had watched the entire process of design to prototype to finished product and had taken the boys measurements, and had even ordered the parts for them, he was still dumbfounded about how large they ended up being. Especially since, in distracted moments, he still thought of the boys of toddling age. He had a hard time reconciling Teddy’s 6’7 and Harry’s 6’3 to the knee high anklebiters he used to wear strapped to his chest as he did the accounts for the shop.

He carefully parked Teddy’s vivid turquoise bike next to the car, and rolled Harry’s bottle green bike to stand alongside Teddy’s, and looked at them appraisingly. They were air and solar powered, with gaping wolf maws that surrounded the front headlight to allow enough airflow to work the pistons and charge the battery, solar panels formed reflective contours along the body, though, if used typically (flown) there would be no need to use the solar reserves at all. The part of him that had been running the books for a wizarding bike shop for the last fifteen years acknowledge that these bikes would sell and sell well. Especially if Teddy and Harry spent the entire summer zooming on them to build up a little buzz. 

Then, suddenly, with a shiver, Remus remembered that there might not be another care-free summer for the boys. That maybe the last, had been the last one. He turned towards his Austin Maxi hatchback in a fit of distraction and opened the hood. The car had been Remus’ since the late seventies, and was running more on magic than any virtue of engineering, He prodded and poked at the mechanics underneath, making sure it was up to picking up the boys at King’s Cross tomorrow. Exiting their fifth year, Harry and Teddy were both weary and wary, their letters veiled and insubstantial, Remus and Sirius knew something must be going on. With Umbridge installed in the school, and Teddy and Harry the sons of two very infamous and anti-ministry men, it couldn’t be easy for them. They’d heard troubling things. Both of them had had detentions all year, and had been kicked off their respective Quidditch teams. Harry had appeared in their fire not to long ago, asking if Sirius was there, and when he heard yes, disappeared without explaining anything. Ron Weasley, Harry’s best friend, had his father attacked, Hermione Granger had apparently started a group called Dumbledore’s Army. Well, actually, according to Remus intel, a girl named Marietta Edgecomb had only mentioned ‘It’s called Dumbledore’s Army, it’s run by Her--’ before a curse bound her tongue and disfigured her face. Remus had taught Hermione in her third year, however, and thought the curse--strong enough where no one would be able to lift it without the parchment that had originated it--was well within her range of ability and typical of her ruthlessness. Teddy was definitely up to  _ something _ but nobody knew what and no one had caught him at it (truly his mother’s child) and Remus had to keep receiving letters from Umbridge about his son’s suspicious, but so far unpunishable behavior.  _ He’s falling behind in classes but seems to spend every moment in the library, Teachers feel as if their offices been search, during times your son has missed class, but nothing is out of place. He seems unperturbed about his Quidditch ban or any punishment I give him for missing class. He smirks at me when I’m scolding him.  _

The most bizarre thing to have happened, however, was when Dumbledore put Harry onto Occlumency lessons without consulting Sirius at all. Sirius was livid, and Remus confused. Teddy knew occlumency, from his mother Tonks and from Remus as well, and Harry knew everything Teddy did. Did Harry really not know how to perform Occlumency? It hadn’t matter to Sirius, he was up at the school the following morning, shouting at Dumbledore, only to have Harry shout at him, telling him to leave it and butt out.  Harry had never raised his voice at either of them before and Sirius was so flabbergasted he could think of nothing to do other than to leave and butt out. 

It’d been a strange year. 

Remus sighed and slammed down the hood to his car. Until tomorrow, he should just enjoy the last bit of quiet, he decided. It’d been a long stretch of quiet, much more than Remus frankly thought he deserved. Fourteen years since the close of the first war, and his life had been idyllic. Most people argued this point, saying that starting a motorbike shop from scratch, petitioning the ministry to allow magical modifications to muggle motorbikes, managing a divorce and raising a son as well as his best friend’s son alongside Sirius, was no picnic.

Oh but it had been.

Sirius had saved him, changed him, made him better. After the war, he’d resigned himself to never being truly happy again. Not in a dramatic vow-of-sobriety way, but it a practical sense. Remus had spent the war in Berlin, isolated and lonely. Except for a few cryptic letters to Tonks, he never contacted anyone for security reasons. He hadn’t known what Teddy looked like, hadn’t known if Tonk, James, Sirius, Peter or Lily were even alive. He’d spend the days drifting through the streets of West Berlin and wandering in and out of art galleries and bookshops, anxious that his marriage to Tonks was falling apart, that his relationship with Teddy was non existent and that he couldn’t stop thinking of Sirius Black. All while waiting on, like a ticking bomb, for the moon to fully ripen, sending him off to battle with other wolves, ones that had gone over to Voldemort, waiting for the night his throat would be ripped out.

By the time the war was over, and over in such a bloody, violent and decisively Remus-at-fault way, he knew he would never recover from it. He’d fallen out of contact with Lily and James, which cause them to think he’d been a spy, which caused them to trust Peter and then die. He’d pushed Sirius out of his life already. Tonks simply asked for a divorce when she saw him for the first time in 10 months. 

It seemed like a place to end things. He resigned himself to a small life, living in his magical tent within the walls of the derelict warehouse James had left him to Change safely in, with occasional visits from Teddy for bright spots and the rest a content smear of grey. 

 

Remus’ hermit lifestyle lasted exactly 3 days. 

He called Remus out of the blue the day after the funeral. Told him that Harry wanted to come round and play with Teddy. Remus told him he was just trying to get a birthday tea out of him. Sirius agreed and Remus baked a cake and Sirius talked him into repairing the warehouse.

_ “You can make a home here you know? For you and Teddy,”  _

And somehow Remus began to consider the possibility of a future. As mad as the idea seemed. Suddenly every room seemed to be filled with an abundance of light. 

They’d needed each other more than either cared to admit at the time, as grief had made Sirius emotional and a terrible sleeper, it had made Remus emotionless and a heavy, frequent sleeper. They’d balanced each other out. 

Remus couldn’t remember when Sirius and Harry moved into the tent with him, just that they’d had and Remus had been grateful, especially since Tonks was leaving Teddy with Remus more and more. Both Sirius and Remus had been so desperate for each other’s company and support, that they’d simply fallen in on each other, becoming a single entity nearly overnight. Suddenly, things that were hard became easy, and things that had been easy became pleasurable. Remus would be up feeding the boys breakfast within the kitchen inside the tent, and Sirius would be whistling outside it, sanding or hammering a bit of the warehouse. Remus would dress them, but left Sirius to play with them as Remus was often to ill. Sirius whose inventor’s mind turned into a flitting, scatterbrain mess after the war relied on Remus to keep schedules: when the boys needed to go to the doctors, when the shopping had to be done, when the clothes had to be laundered. Remus whose chronic pain and anxiety had double over and over again on itself after the war, relied on Sirius to actually do the things Remus kept such good track of. 

And both of them thought,  _ ‘How lucky am I?’ _

It might not have been a happily ever after--they’d taken years to heal properly, to function normally, but it hadn’t been a trial or a tribulation. It’d been a picnic. And Remus had enjoyed every minute of it.

Enjoying. It wasn’t over, not quite yet. 

 

“Sirius are you here?” Remus called in the present day, but no one answered in the apartment. The afternoon was slowly fading, but Remus didn’t need the lights just yet. He stood a bit absentmindedly in the living room, before deciding to take on the stack of junk he’d cleared from the garage. His and Sirius school trunks, filled with their cauldrons and old school books were promptly labeled with ‘Charity’ and pushed aside. Only to be joined by three boxes of children’s clothes, two boxes of 80’s era grown mens clothes and a box of frankly hideous flatware. He wrote a brief ‘please pick up’ form to ‘Handy-Downs Second Hand Store’ and flicked it into a candle flame with a pinch of floo. 

The last box was the hardest. It was full of paper things, photos and receipts, diaries and books and a fistfull of muggle money. Nothing that could be given away, but nothing that could be easily thrown away either, not without properly looking through to see if anything important still resided within. Best to start at random, Remus told himself, as he deliberately dug into the box and pulled out a large, thick sketch book that had to belong to Sirius. 

Remus wasn’t normally a snoop, and he knew Sirius had never hidden anything more devious than a surprise party from him, but the sturdy black board covers and the silvery looped wire binding drew Remus in.  

It was as much as a collage as Sirius was, with photos and scraps paperclipped to the heavy paper marked in blueprints and specs and jotted notes and poems and the occasional sketch. Remus turned the pages carefully between delicate fingers, careful not to smudge the charcoal and eyeliner Sirius had wrote it. The first few pages were to-scale etchings of the second floor of the warehouse as it turned into their home. Remus hadn’t been very involved in the process ( _ do what you want Sirius, I’m fine with anything, you’re the one who wants to do this _ ) and was amazed on how many iterations of a kitchen-living room-three bedrooms-two baths Sirius could make. He saw the emergence of an en suite bathroom and it’s dissolution and then it’s rebirth over seven pages. Finally falling onto one that most resembled their apartment now, with a list in Important Red Drafting Pencil titled ‘Things to Make Moony Happy?’ the list included ideas like ‘Fireplace in living room AND kitchen? En Suite Bath with large Bathtub, Built in Book Shelfs, Bay Window Seat for Reading, and the initials A.G.L. that he stared at it for a moment before it came to him.

_ Look Moons, Art Gallery Lighting, for all your paintings  _

_ Sirius I collect neon and light sculptures!  _

_ No! The other ones, you know your bloke with the pools and the other one with the photos _

_ I don’t know Sirius, if you like.  _

_ No, come on Moons, you’re going to have to let yourself want something eventually.  _

Remus lifted his eyes to the smattering of eye level track lighting that ringed the kitchen, similar to those around the rest of the apartment. The David Hockney painting that hung over the kitchen table shone brightly and boldly under its little illuminating lamp, and Remus thought of his modest art collection, the Hockney’s and the Peter Hujar’s photos and the Lili Lakichs he’d managed to buy. At the time he thought Sirius had been pushy and annoying, just wanting to get on with the next bit of his remodeling, but he’d been trying, in his Sirius way, to give Remus back some of his happiness. 

“Are you here?” Came a voice from the front room.

“I’m in the kitchen,” Remus said, his voice rough in his throat.

“Hey, Moons, what are you doing?”  Sirius asked. Coming in and tossing his leather jacket over a chair. 

“Thinking of Art Gallery Lighting,” Remus answered accepting a kiss on his cheek as Sirius passed him on the way to the fridge. 

“Oh do we need more lights? I can install more if you--” 

Remus had followed him across the room and pulled him into a kiss. 

Confused, but always an opportunistic hunter, Sirius relaxed and opened up to Remus urgent affections.

“I’m really lucky to have you, you know?” Remus said.

“Yes but--” suddenly a bang behind both of them, they whirled, a shield charm already up via Remus, and a wand drawn via Siriu to see a silvery coyote sitting straight back on the kitchen table.

“Siri--” 

**_“We will not be on the train, the ministry has been infiltrated, the bike shop and house will be search at dawn. Leave after nightfall, meet us where we watched coyotes,”_ **

The coyote faded away as the pair stood transfixed, hearts beating in their throats. 

“So this is it then,” Sirius said from the doorway, “This is the last day before the war,”  

“Last evening, we only have about six hours, give or take,” Remus said tiredly. 

“Be serious,” 

“You’re Sirius,” Remus said, passing up the opportunity for empathy in order to finally make that pun. 

Sirius blew out a frustrated breath, but managed a small smile. Remus summoned his patronus, relaying back to Teddy,  _ We’ll see you soon, move smart, check for tracking spells _

Sirius looked put out butt shook his head and sighed, “Alright, let’s pack up, have you been keeping up with the…” 

“I have,” Remus answered, “More for the ritual than anything,” 

It calmed him down during the daylight hours of a full moon. He walked over to a fair size portrait of Remus and Sirius straddling bikes, Harry and Teddy (mere tots) sitting before them. They’d been on vacation in the States, living out a long held ‘Easy Rider’ fantasy of Sirius’, Tonks and Tonk’s mum had come too, towing the boys in a rental car neither one had been very good at driving. 

Remus lifted the picture off the wall, and tapped the plaster beneath it with his wand. The wall fell away and revealed two bags: one resembled a handsome brown leather doctor’s bag, the other, a black leather saddlebag for a motorbike. 

“Let me do a quick inventory,” Remus said, opening the bags and summoning a list from both of them. They were seemingly bottomless, and perfectly organized. Sirius watched for a moment as Remus ran his wand tip down both lists, the items gleaming green to confirm they were in there, before starting to look around the room. The urge to shove everything away was strong, he wanted to save Remus’ artwork, his records, the boys primary school drawing, the rug they’d just bought, the vase of flowers, the--

“We can’t take anything with us,” Remus said, as if privy to Sirius’ scurrying thoughts, “We can’t give any indication we had forewarning. If Teddy has a spy we can’t put them onto them,” 

“I’ll go destroy anything incriminating then,” Sirius announced, then grabbed Remus’ upper arm, “It’ll be different this time around, you know that right?” 

“Of course it will be,” Remus said, quickly giving him a small kiss, making Sirius jump, “We’ll have each other this time,” 

Sirius nodded, swallowing hard, then broke away, eliminating the hidey hole in the wall and putting the portrait back up. 

He popped into Harry’s  room first, taking a good look around. By virtue of a teenager’s need for privacy he hadn’t been in here for awhile. Aerial maps and photos covered the walls, alongside photos of surprised looking Quidditch players, birds, and in one case that made Sirius’ heart stop for a moment, a dragon. Harry flew everywhere, and was an avid photographer, and had simply grown more and more skillful and daring with age. He took down the dragon photo, but left the rest to hang alongside various sensational news articles about Harry, that Harry clipped out for a laugh. Though he came close to taking down the one that said ‘Raised by Wolves: The Boy Who Lived and His Corruption by Sex, Drugs and Rock and Roll!’--It sported a very nice family portrait of them. Sirius instead collected the frame photos of Lily and James and Remus and Sirius from the nightstand, and took Lily’s leather jacket off the hook on the wall where he had it displayed. He pulled the Gryffindor flag from Harry’s bedpost and put it up in its place, as to not leave the wall bare, and took another final look around the room. The cheery maps and photos covering all but slivers of the wall’s bright sky blue paint seemed to belong to a much more carefree child, and Sirius felt guilty that he couldn’t spare Harry from Voldemort’s second rise to power. It wasn’t fair and Harry didn’t deserve it, but there was no changing it now. Best to focus on the task at hand. 

In a final sweep of the room, Sirius found a shoebox underneath the bed. Inside was a note from Petunia Harry’s peculiar aunt ( _ Found these in the attic, not sure if I could burn them, please dispose for me) _ and a set of badges of Lily’s that, when pinned could induce anything from Invisibility Charms, Shield Charms, Wake Up Charms, Undetectable Charms, and several more Sirius had never learned the use for. They should all be dead by now, but Lily was better at Charms that most. He held one in his hand, marked with The Invisible Three Man Band! And clicked it, watching with some satisfaction as his hand and the rest of  him disappeared. He clicked it off, placed the photos he was taking from the room on top of them, and closed the box. They’d most certainly come in handy. 

Meanwhile, Remus, having moved from the kitchen to Teddy’s room, was wondering if he’d been to lenient a parent. Teddy had always been a secretive little monster, and was something like a mad scientist mixed with a heartless delinquent mixed with a crazy cat lady. On the outside, his room looked as bland and innocuous as Teddy would like people to believe he was: A bobble-stitch afghan in black and yellow on the bed, Hufflepuff banners on the walls, plants on the sill, but Remus knew his son better than most people, he also knew how to look unassuming to outsiders while still misbehaving extensively. 

He walked over to the plants on the sill and tapped them with his wand, and the collection of daisies collapsed into the marijuana plants Remus was expecting. He shook his head as he destroyed them but felt no real anger towards his son, instead reminding himself to do the same to his own not-actually-a-rubber-plant in the corner of his bedroom. He tapped the hanging paper lanterns and mobiles around the room, revealing some to be just that, but others to being strange terrariums and in one case, an insectarium filled with strange butterflies that had been a standing infestation of the apartment for years. 

He open the closet, but it was only filled with clothes, apparently Teddy was to vain to risk his clothing. A general drawer search led to some illegal potion ingredients being destroyed, and a few frankly disturbing books being set aside to bring to Teddy. Though Remus didn’t know if he really wanted to bring ‘The Studies and Abominations of Rognark the Demented’ to his son, he knew that Teddy was probably reading them to strengthen his defensive, rather than his offensive spellwork. He found a little parcel of spliffs that were fresh enough that Remus lit one to calm his climbing anxiety and general 5-days-before-full-moon aches while he found a few more disturbing books, an invisibility cloak he tripped on (very well done but not as nice as Harry’s), and a small scrapbook full of photos and letters and souvenirs and a sentimentality he knew his son possessed but didn’t think he would ever find evidence of that made him tear up a bit. 

He left the room, and went down to pack the books and cloak into Sirius’ saddle bag. 

“Got everything from Teddy’s room?” Sirius asked coming into the kitchen. 

“I hope so, lots of things the ministry would find interesting in there,” 

“So I see,” Sirius said, leaning in and grabbing Remus’ wrist to take a drag, the marijuana instantly untensing his neck muscles, “This tastes like Tonk’s PepperImp Kush, from back at school,” 

“Probably where he got it from, the little monster. We should probably do our room together,” Remus added, zipping the saddlebag up again. 

“Right,” Sirius said, throat suddenly dry. He followed Remus into the largest bedroom with a bay window that faced out across the rooftops. Remus walked to the window seat and picked up the book he was currently reading, before disappearing into the loo. Sirius sat hard in his squashy arm chair, fishing up his workbook (he refused to call it a  _ diary _ , it was so much more than a  _ diary _ ) from where it leaned against the wall. 

He couldn’t think of another thing to take. Or rather, he could only think of things to take. How could he choose just a handful? Did he want to take The Thick-bottom Cauldron's album Remus bought him for their anniversary, affectionate red marker notes written in all the margins? Or did he want to take his heavy architecture books? Or Harry’s and Teddy’s first brooms, casted in copper and hung shining over the window? Maybe all his photo albums or record albums or leather jackets decoupaged with the boys childhood artwork? How could he decide what stayed, to be sacked and maybe destroyed by the ministry, and what could be tucked away as a memento of a time without war?

“You alright Pads?” Remus said, coming out of the bathroom with their shave kits and his Wolfsbane potion, he idly destroyed a potted plant while looking expectantly at Sirius. 

“Yeah, I’m fine Moons,” Sirius said, running a hand over his workbook.

Remus came to stand in front of Sirius and offered a hand up, but Sirius, a bit heady with emotion, wrapped his arms around Remus’ waist and buried his face into Remus belly. 

“Are you getting a bit wobbly?” Remus asked softly stroking Sirius’ hair as Sirius nuzzled his knitted jumper. ‘Wobbly’ in this house covered everything to ‘panic attacks on the kitchen floor’ to ‘unfounded and unreasonable suspicions about the new post man’. It’d been a code word in their early years together, used to keep the boys ignorant of a parent was having a melt down, but it’d wormed its way into their regular lexicon even after the boys became acquainted with the effects of PTSD. 

“No,” Sirius mumbled into Remus’ jumper, “I’m getting a bit sentimental,”

“Much worse,” Remus said, unsuccessfully biting back the amusement in his voice, “Come, play your love songs for me, we still have some time before we have to pack the boot,” 

“Only for you,” Sirius sighed as Remus played with his hair.  

Remus went to stretch out on their bed, and Sirius put on a CD filling the room with the sound of Queen’s Heaven for Everyone. 

“Oh no, not Freddie, he still makes me so sad,” Remus said. Sirius smiled, but didn’t tease, the Queen frontman had been dead four years at this point, but Remus still had a small shrine built up under a Freddie Mercury poster in the corner. Sirius pulled out Remus’ Cure album (Kiss Kiss Kiss!) instead, put it on the C side so ‘Just Like Heaven’ started to play and went to lay next to him. 

“Such a cozy room,” Sirius said dreamily, watching the sunset bleed through the windows, turning Remus’ angular face into a fiery gemstone carving. 

“And to think it used to be a shithole,” Remus replied, eyes closed.

“It’s always be a very, very, very, fine house,” Sirius said defensively. 

“It was a leaky, dirty loft full of rats that went after the children, ghouls who went after me, and a rabid Puffbat that tried to nest in your hair,” Remus said, “But you made it so much better, dear,” He finished, patting Sirius’ hand. 

“Thank you,” Sirius said loftily, and then, after a moment, “We probably won’t be able to come back you know,” 

“I know, Sirius,” Remus said, suddenly sounding like he had a cold. Sirius didn’t reply as they were both sucked into their own memories of the apartment. For Sirius, who’d survived the war with night terrors and feelings of helplessness, it’d been something he could fix. This strange old warehouse among a block of abandoned warehouses, empty since Grindelwald’s siege on the neighborhood some thirty years previously. At first, he’d clung to the routine and the salve of physical labor. He’d get up neatly at five in the morning, put on a pot of coffee for when Remus would finally give up trying to sleep any longer, and left their tent to work on the loft until his arms and back burned. Then it was eating a quick lunch from Remus, napping a bit and taking the boys out to do whatever errands Remus thought of but couldn’t bear to force himself out of their apartment for. They’d trapeze around their post-apocalyptic neighborhood, overrunned with threstels and puffbats and the occasional Snap-pop Lizard, wandering aimlessly as the boys bounced along in their stroller. 

When he’d finally finished the place, he’d brought up that they were all doing a lot better now, and maybe it was time for Harry and Sirius to move out into their own place and leave Teddy and Remus alone to be a family. Remus had looked shocked, laughed, and leaned over and kissed him, They’d made love on the floor in front of the fire, the boys asleep in their freshly painted rooms that still smelled of the cedar that formed them. 

Sirius rolled over and pushed up Remus’ shirt, pressing his cheek against Remus’ warm stomach. 

“Oh you,” Remus said, snaking a hand down the back of Sirius’ shirt to scratch his back. He wanted to say something to jostle Sirius out of his nostalgic funk, but Remus was choking on his own memories, cliche things like Christmases and Birthdays and the occasional trip to St. Mungos, and how the boys took their first steps within minutes of each other.   

Harry, had started it, who, seemingly on a whim, grabbed Sirius’ leg, hauled himself up, and took off running down the length of the recently re-floored apartment, Teddy, without hesitation, rapidly toddled after him as if he’d been doing it for years, both of them brilliant in the weak spring light. He could still feel Sirius’ fingers digging into his skin as they both smiled and laughed for the first time since that October. Not even proper laughs, not like in their school days, but more like gasps of wonder and delight that fluttered and died as they both rushed to pick up their children and pull them back, not feeling secure enough to let them out of arm’s length just yet. 

 

Despite not having built it, Remus cherished the building just as much as Sirius because, for a while he’d been unable to leave it. The close of the war had left him with intense agoraphobia, he rarely left his tent home and when he did his heart pounded the entire time, unable to shake the feeling that he was being lined up in someone’s sights. Sirius had been a godsend when he offered to fix up the place, and Remus had insisted that he and Harry moved in for the duration. Not that Sirius had noticed, he’d thought Remus was bestowing some pitied favor, giving the grieving new father something to focus on while he helped with the child rearing. Sirius didn’t realize how bad it was until he’d gotten the apartment to the point where they could live in it instead of the tent and Remus simply couldn’t do it.  He stayed in the tent as Sirius built the living room around it, coaxing him out in inches, first leaving the flap open while they ate dinner, then eating dinner right of the threshold of the tent, then leaving the flap open at night while they slept, until Remus could come out for brief spells, then ultimately was able to collapse the tent completely. 

The process had to be repeated to get Remus downstairs, and again to get him out the door and into public. That last bit came close to never happening, until Sirius had the idea of fixing up the downstairs with all the windows and doors open, so inadvertently, one of the boys would dash outside on their new toddling legs while Sirius was too entrapped in a project and Remus would instinctively chase after them. He’d immediately bolt back in, but soon he grew comfortable being inside a five foot radius of the shop. Sirius then bought the building next door, and another, and another to keep moving Remus’ goal posts all the way down the block. Sirius almost went broke but they had great success renting them out to the other degenerates of wizarding society (the Gays, the Magical Beings, and occasionally artist and poets) and slowly the neighborhood came back alive. 

“Are you going to be alright, Sirius?” Remus asked, coming back to present, “I can feel your anxiety,” 

“Nah, I’m fine,” Sirius said, moving upward to burrow into Remus’ neck.  “It’s the waiting for nightfall that’s getting me, I’ve never had extra time rabbiting out before,” 

“We’re older and more prepared, we could of gotten out of here in ten minutes if we wanted,” Remus boasted.

“But maybe we should bring more stuff?” Sirius asked tentatively. Remus rolled his eyes and pulled away to look Sirius in his upturned face, 

“What sort of stuff?” 

“Just you know, a few little things....like the whole apartment, and the shop below, and maybe our favorite pub?” Sirius said. 

“Sirius, you idiot,” Remus answered resting his forehead on Sirius’ and laughing. 

“Well you know it’s a very, very, very fine house, and we put in a lot of work into it, we should at least make it unplottable, hide it so we can come back to it, ” Sirius said. 

“We can’t, we have to look like we didn’t have any warning, preserve whoever Teddy scrounged up as a spy,” Remus said, “And this isn’t a very very fine house, I’ll remind you,” 

“It’s not?” Sirius asked, slightly muffled as he pressed back into Remus’ neck again.

“No. It’s a shit hole, it’s always been a shit hole,” Remus told him, “It’s a very, very, very fine house because you made it into one. Because you put a lot of love and work into it and raised two beautiful people in it and that’s what makes it great. Are you still willing to put in work for things you really want?” 

“Re--” 

“Yes or no, Pads,” Remus reprimanded. 

“Yes,”  

“Are you still willing to love and take care of our children?” 

“Yes,” 

“Then is there any reason we can’t find another little shit hole in a shitty neighborhood and make it into a very very very fine house?” 

“No,” Sirius answered, “But I’ve gotten really attached to this one,” 

“It’s just stuff, Sirius,” Remus answered, “We’ll buy more. We’ll survive, regroup, and rebuild, just like we always do,” 

Sirius pushed up and pressed his lips against Remus’ and Remus aggressively kissed back melding his mouth into Sirius’ and forcing him into the mattress. 

“Okay?” Remus asked finally. 

“Okay,” Sirius answered, breathlessly, “but I’m taking the photo albums though,” 

“Fine,” Remus said, “I’m taking the Hujar in the hallway,” 

“Anything you want,” Sirius said, kissing him again.

“You spoil me,” Remus said. 

“It’s no more than you deserve,” Sirius said, idly squeezing the swell of Remus’ ass. 

“Really?” Remus laughed.

“What?” Sirius said innocently, “It’s our last night here,” 

“I suppose you’re right,” Remus relented, already tugging up Sirius’ shirt. 

It was a certain kind of joy, making love to someone over the course of fifteenish years. Feeling, bit by bit, as someone’s body changes, their preferences, their sounds. They knew the path, knew its twists and turns, could take time to take in the scenery now: how Sirius tasted slightly of salt but Remus of honey, the slow softening of Sirius’ navel, the smoothing of Remus’ boney joints, flares of grey at temples, wrinkles in eye corners. The languid feeling that comes after orgasm, even as Remus took Sirius’ hips in his grasp and fervently urged him to his own climax. 

“Oh, Remus,” Sirius sighed contently as Remus kissed his inner thighs, “This isn’t a bad note to leave on,” 

Remus smiled and stood up to stretch in front of the one person he wasn’t self conscious about his scars with, and went over to the record player to play some love songs for him as well. He delicately took The Cure off the record player, and put on a wizard album from the mid-eighties. Thick-Bottom Cauldron's had been the first gay and lycanthropic people he’d ever heard of, with their first ‘76 LP ‘Lycanthropy, True Love, and Other Infectious Diseases’ that he and Sirius played constantly in their dorm room. This one was their final album before the band broke up in ‘87 without releasing their last album. 

Remus put on the Silverbullet Breakup album, and started to sing along with the first track, ‘Beau Fortescue, I Love You’ 

‘ _ Baby you were bred to be a wolfhound,  _

_ Toughest motherfucker  _

_ All Around  _

_ Beat me up when I’m _

_ Feeling Down  _

_ A Full Moon Rises but you  _

_ Stick Around  _

_ Tearing through the night and we’re  _

_ Covering Ground  _

_ Gonna turn this city into a  _

_ Dog Pound _ ’ 

He attempted to dance a bit as the song broke into an unbridled, driving wave of guitar, but winced, 

“I’m too old to be a punker,” He lamented, rotating his shoulder. 

“You were never a punker,” Sirius said, “You were at best a New Wave Brat,” 

“I’m too old to be a New Wave Brat,” Remus corrected, biting Sirius’ shoulder, “ _ You’re  _ too old to be a punker,” 

“We’re about to go on the lam in roughly forty minutes, you want me to retire from being punk? What if I need to break in a car or punch a bobby?” Sirius asked, one eyebrow cocked. 

“Fine, you can still be a Punker,” Remus allotted, picking up his shirt from the floor and putting it back on, “And I’ll still be a New Wave Brat in case we need to wax poetic or soothe some mystical creature with a synthesizer,” 

“My bleeding hero, you are,” Sirius said, sitting up and kissing his cheek. 

They got dressed, but let the song finished before turning off the record player and heading into the kitchen. 

“I’m going to set up a tea, and do a spell so they’re still hot when the ministry comes round,” Sirius announced, looking for their mugs. 

“I’ll pack up the car,” Remus volunteered, and gathered the two bags, and let himself out of the apartment. There, on the walkway that led to the stairs, that would lead to the car that would lead to the boys that would lead to them abandoning their home, he set down his armful and rubbed his eyes with the heels of his hand. Despite what he’d said to soothe Sirius’ mood, he about lost his resolve in the hall, nearly turned around to cast a concealment charm on the apartment to holed up with Sirius for the duration. They’ve already had their war, why not spare them this one and let them live in the happy home they’d built themselves? He took a ragged breath and looked up. 

In Berlin, living with the werewolves, he’d slept during the day and only came out a night, with the rest of his pack. He’d fallen in love with neon sculptures and light up signs and marquees and everything that shone during the night. He’d always downplayed his love for it to Sirius, not wanting to admit that he’d loved even that small thing while living with werewolves. So he was surprised one day, after a solid week of complaining about how dark the walkway outside the apartment was and how he was going to trip and do an injury, Remus walked up the stairs to find four lights hanging at intervals from the ceiling in the walkway. Not normal lights, neon signs, gleaming a bright white as they read across four different fixtures There’s A. Light That. Never Goes. OUT. He could even read them now, because Sirius made them dual sided. 

And that. That’s what he wanted to take with him. Sirius, and his bottomless well of thoughtfulness, not a thoughtfulness rooted in care and kindness, though that was there too, but as a symptom of a mind that never stopped thinking, planning, building and inventing. To be the object of Sirius’ love was to wake up, more mornings than not, to a thing of wonder. That Sirius just thought of, and had wanted to share, to make him smile. That was something that no house, however fine, could hold. 

Sirius was his house and his home. He truly wasn’t leaving anything behind. 

He gave one more sigh, picked up the bags, and walked towards the stairs, whistling as he went, 

_ Our House, is a very very very fine house,  _

_ With two cats in the yard,  _

_ Life used to be so hard and now it's easy  _

_ Because of you _


End file.
